The federal trial of a Kansas man for manufacturing and selling firearms and silencers without a federal license could very well turn out to be the pivotal case that not only challenges the constitutionality of the National Firearms Act of 1934, but also every federal firearms law ever passed in a battle that will determine whether it is the states or the federal government that has the constitutional right to pass gun laws.
Put bluntly, this could be huge.
When Shane Cox began selling his homemade firearms and silencers out of his military surplus store, he stamped “Made in Kansas” on them to assure buyers that a Kansas law would prevent federal prosecution of anyone owning firearms made, sold and kept in the state.
The 45-year-old Chanute resident also handed out copies to customers of the Second Amendment Protection Act passed in 2013 by the Kansas Legislature and signed by Gov. Sam Brownback, and even collected sales taxes. His biggest selling item was unregistered gun silencers that were flying out of the shop as fast as Cox could make them, prosecutors said later. One of those customers – 28-year-old Jeremy Kettler of Chanute – was so enthusiastic about the silencer that he posted a video on Facebook.
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But last week a jury found Cox guilty of violating federal law for the manufacture, sale and possession of unregistered firearms and silencers. Kettler was found guilty on one count for possessing the unregistered silencer.
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The case could reverberate across the country because it cites the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, pitting the federal government’s right to regulate firearms against the rights of states. The judge overseeing the case expects it ultimately to end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.
At trial, defense attorneys contended their clients believed the Kansas law made their activities legal, arguing they are “caught in the crossfire” of the struggle between the state and the federal government over gun control.
Cox and Kettler were convicted under the National Firearms Act, which is a part of the Internal Revenue code enacted under Congress’ power to levy taxes. The case raises the question of whether that taxing authority can be used to regulate firearms that stay within state borders. Advocates for state’s rights also contend such guns do not fall under Congress’ power to regulate interstate commerce.
After a decades-long wait, we finally appear to have a case that is likely to see the United States Supreme Court have to directly examine whether the Founding Fathers meant what they said when they wrote amendments to a federal Constitution that was designed to tightly bind and constrict the reach of the federal government.
What most 21st Century Americans simply do not grasp is that the Constitution and Bill of Rights were not written to to give rights to the citizens of our then-new nation, but was instead written to tightly constrain the federal government.
The Founders had just won a long and brutal war against a far-away foreign government, and the Federalists and Anti-Federalists were locked in a power struggle on just how much power the federal government in a swamp on the Potomac River would be allowed to have. The Federalists were concerned that the federal government would be anemic and far too weak to be of any use at all, while the Anti-Federalists wanted the power to remain where they felt it belonged, with the states, so that the people in each state could determine what is best for that state’s citizens.
The Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution to placate the concerns of the Anti-Federalists, and was mean to be ten strong chains binding down the then-puny federal leviathan to prevent future abuses.
The Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights was written by Founding Fathers who understood the right to bear arms as a natural human right that the Creator bestowed upon each and every human being. How can there be any other right, if the right to defend your life is not the most paramount right of them all?
They almost felt it silly to have to codify a natural right that was so obviously self-evident to them, but knowing that a federal government unchained is a federal government tyrannical, they ratified the basic human right to bear arms within the Second Amendment.
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
